


The Kind the Devil Pities

by elvisqueso



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drug Use, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, Freeform, M/M, so basically just bodies, the OC's are super minor characters, voyerism, with one or two loosely based on a couple minor characters from the books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2032863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvisqueso/pseuds/elvisqueso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>...something like love – too selfish to really be love, and too poisonous, certainly, but love he will call it...</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Vignettes of Will, a cadet at the Police Academy, and Hannibal, a promising medical student.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kind the Devil Pities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fivetooneinfive (Melina)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Fivetooneinfive+%28Melina%29).



> Commission for my darling, darling [Melina!](http://fivetooneinfive.tumblr.com/) who told me: "write whatever you want!"
> 
> So I decided to run with our love of young Hanni and throw a young Will in there, too!

She is a beautiful girl, standing perhaps five foot ten in black, leather boots stretched up to the knee. Sitting on the edge of the bed, her hair pooling over her shoulders in ringlets, red and black in the firelight, she blinks slowly and lets the smoke drift over her lips.

She isn’t the kind of favor Will was expecting.

“So, are we gonna do this or what?” She drawls, slow and low and heavy with cigarette smoke. Will glances nervously from her fingertips to the pink of her nipples, relaxed and round on her breasts. He swallows.

“Do-? Well, I _do_ know what…” She’s staring at him from beneath her lashes; they look almost wet as she tilts her head and taps the ashes from her cigarette. She shrugs.

“Do you want to watch first? I don’t mind that. Helps most guys most of the time.”

“Thanks, but I’m…I’m not sure I want this.”

For a moment, the girl’s lips are tight and she taps her leather boot thrice on the carpet. She leans back and tilts her head up, her attentions now over Will’s shoulder. “Well, honey: your money, your call.”

Hannibal Lecter’s hand slides up Will’s arm and shoulder, pressing gently to his neck. “I may be able to persuade him. Please sit tight for a moment.” His lips are close to Will’s ear and he can hear his polite smile; all obeisance and manners, even to a call girl.

~////~

The Police Academy is two blocks from a large fraternity house near the University campus. It isn’t unusual for the students to mingle with the cadets, and it isn’t unusual for the parties at this particular fraternity to fly far beneath the radar of the Department, whose alumni are, perhaps, more than a little biased.

Will, being unable to afford the dorms nearby the Academy, is one of those cadets who bunks often on the fraternity couches.

 

Hannibal is a regular at campus events. He’s something of a Cop Charmer by reputation and his invitations are often promised with gifts of substance – cultural and otherwise.

Will first sees Hannibal sprawled atop a table, wine glass held graciously in his hands. He’s pontificating about a particular dean, one who has a problem with this particular fraternity, and speculating on the state of his genitals based on his aggressive behavior. There is riotous laughter, and a female classmate of his lays down in his lap, handing him a joint. Will asks him if he really thinks the size and state of a man’s genitals affect so strongly on the psyche. He says according to Freud, yes.

“But what about according to you?”

“I’d say it’s humorous enough to make it true in this particular case.”

“You like twisting things for the sake of humor?”

“Only in company. Are you a cop?”

No, but they do come, and the lights go out and the drinks are hid with the bongs and air freshener is sprayed. Hannibal answers the door. Cop Charmer, indeed, he is and the cops leave. Will thinks he’s the most interesting man he’s ever met. He tells him the exact opposite.

~////~

Hannibal doesn’t walk. He waltzes. He saunters and glides, but never merely moves. The nursing student hangs on his arm as they walk past bars and dives and pissing strangers in alleyways. Will walks two steps behind, near Sutcliff, attentions mostly on Hannibal’s back, the way his fingers glide through red hair and trace along a waif-like shoulder. The way his feet hit the pavement and leave it again, and how his profile seems to blend against the night like an underpainting.

“We could see _Picnic,_ ” she says, “or _Dial M for Murder._ ” She turns to her roommate, a comely brown-haired little mouse with doe-eyes. “Want to see _M_? I hear it’s a scream.”

Hannibal makes a noise through his nose that could be mistaken for a snorting huff, but could also be mistaken for a small cough. The red nurse slaps his arm. “What? What’s wrong with _M_?”

“It’s not the play itself,” he says, in that way of broaching false placation without really being condescending, “I just find stage murders to be…unconvincing.”

“You’re so _droll_ ,” she squeals, ‘ _o_ ’-ing the word through her mouth in an odd pass at American aristocracy, “of course it’s unconvincing. It’s on a _stage_.”

“Let’s see _Picnic_. Darla, you’d like that one.”

The mouse-girl shrugs. Hannibal tugs her shoulder until she’s under his arm, snug, with her cheeks going flush. “Darla’s choice, I say. Let’s see _Picnic_.”

“I’ll vote _Picnic_ ,” Sutcliff says. He’s eyeing the pretty redhead, and Will can see the cogs turning on when exactly she’ll be off Hannibal’s arm and how much time it takes to get back to his dorm, whether or not she’s the type to let him go bare, maybe with a drink or two…

“Will, about you?” Will’s gaze snaps off Sutcliff and onto Hannibal’s face, the lightly raised brow and slight dimpling where his smirk tugs upward. “ _M_ or _Picnic_?”

“I’ll say _Picnic_ ,” he says, “if I want to see a good version of _M_ , I’ll watch Hitchcock’s.”

“Good answer.”

Hannibal’s teeth show this time, and Will coughs into his hand for no particular reason other than to hide his own mouth.

~////~

She moans under him, her eyelids fluttering as she claws the sheets. The heat and the thickness of the air make it difficult to breathe, and Will worries, for a moment, that his gasps are uncomely, before the feeling of a tight, warm, wetness around his cock saturates his senses and he thrusts harder.

Hannibal, spent and waiting on the mattress, is watching so very closely. His eyes are red and his lips part, ever so slightly. He looks like the kind of ancient boys immortalized in oil, sensual male-nymphs with magic in their skin. Will sees him, catches his eyes, and can no longer look away.

He can feel his climax coming, the girl beneath him is crying out – of course she is, she’s being paid to; no way of knowing how real she’s being – tightening and tightening around him. Hannibal moves closer, almost like smoke, touching Will’s face. He presses his lips to Will’s open mouth and Will comes. He collapses, and Hannibal kisses his eyes, his cheeks. He’s whispering something into Will’s ear, something low and quick in a language Will doesn’t understand.

~////~

Hannibal’s room is small, but neat. His possessions are packed cleanly in various shelves and nooks and there are sketches taped to the wallpaper. The mattress is barely more than a twin, and it squeals when Hannibal sits on it.

That’s inaccurate. Hannibal doesn’t sit; he _enthrones._ He lounges, reclines; he beckons. His back bows and his shoulders curl like a cat’s with his eyes gleaming red in the sparse sunlight.

Will leans into the space between Hannibal’s legs and he feels them press into him, holding him tight as Hannibal smiles with his sharp little teeth.

“You’re going to let me crash here, aren’t you?” Will asks him. He can feel the bulge of Hannibal’s crotch pressing up against him.

“That’s one thing to call it.”

Will touches Hannibal’s face, softly, with the tips of his fingers. The sharply cut features, his jaw – strong, but not over-powerful – the peaking of his hairline and the soft lips that pucker and kiss at him, that part wet for a tongue to come out and taste.

_They are so young_ , Will thinks, and it’s a strange thought. One removed from his body, and like some observer version of himself in another age watching some incarnation of Spring. _So young_. Their bodies lean, something green about them both; though, truly, they are beyond that greenness and broaching something darker. He’d want the moment painted, Hannibal would. Something which, when taken out of context, could be mistaken for a pure kind of young love; romantic.

But there is nothing pure about this. Or really romantic.

And there, that is the beauty of Hannibal’s perversity.

Hannibal’s legs wrapped around his waist, Will pushes them both back onto the bed, never minding the squeal of the springs. Being in a particularly lazy sentiment, they gyrate against each other. Enjoying the feel of the other’s body, their scents and sounds, little things that excite and amuse in a gentle kind of foreplay. They are content, for now, with the taste of lips.

~////~

“This,” Will says, “isn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“You don’t like her?” Hannibal’s lips are right at Will’s ear and he can feel their movements. He can feel Hannibal’s fingers ghosting over his shoulders and down his back. His breathing stutters.

“No- I mean- I do, I like her.”

The girl shifts indignantly on the bed, her eyebrow twitches and she takes another drag from her cigarette. He can feel Hannibal’s lips grin and then _purr_ :

“ _Good._ ”

Hannibal’s hands slip around to Will’s front; Will’s eyes flutter and he’s sighing with the feeling of Hannibal’s hands on his chest, his belly, his pelvis, the dip of his hips, God–

“You may begin touching yourself.” Hannibal’s voice seems to come through a filter, and the girl shrugs, puts out her cigarette in a glass ashtray on the nightstand, and spreads her legs.

~////~

“Why’d your uncle send you all the way out here?”

Hannibal laughs and leans into Will, wrapping his arm around his waist. “To keep me out of trouble.” He says.

“And how is that working so far?”

“Not very well, I’ll be honest.”

Hannibal smells like flour and vanilla and there’s specks of the stuff in his shirt from crashing the morning culinary course. “What did you do, I mean,” Will says, “to make your uncle think he had to send you all the way out here just to keep you out of trouble?”

Hannibal’s hand tightens on Will’s waist, and for a moment, he’s very far away. His eyes are gone, somehow, and he’s back before the panic sets in too deeply. Glinting red. Hannibal’s eyes are deep maroon with red glinting in them. It’s that red that Will sees when Hannibal kisses him.

Hannibal lets go of Will’s waist and runs his hand over Will’s back. “I killed someone.” He says.

He says it as though he were telling Will he had cheated on a test.

And Hannibal is walking away.

~////~

“Do you have plans for Spring Break?”

Will looks up from his books and has to process what this ‘Spring Break’ is. “No,” he says, finally, looking down again, “I suppose I don’t.”

“Would you like to have plans for Spring Break?”

Will looks up again and this time Hannibal has two plane tickets: Baltimore to Paris.

Paris to Lithuania.

“It’s a funny thing,” Will says, “I really shouldn’t be surprised, and yet…”

“I like you in a constant state of surprise.”

“Clearly.” Hannibal tilts his head that way he does whenever he is about to ask a question.

“Do you resent my efforts to surprise you,” he says it slowly, as if he were constructing the words from scratch in his mind, “or do you resent your reacting with surprise?”

“There’s no resentment,” Will says. Hannibal has leaned in closer now and Will can feel his exhales, “I’m a bit annoyed that I’m surprised, but I think I enjoy it.”

“Good.” Hannibal brushes his lips against Will’s and is up and gone before Will can blink. He never got to outright answer Hannibal’s question. As if that mattered; Will knows he’ll be getting on that plane regardless.

~////~

Watching Hannibal with women is like watching the machinations of a modern Don Juan. The last of the knights in shining armor with a rose between his teeth. Perhaps it’s the exotic lure of some faraway name and castle, no longer his. The distinctly European courtesy and taste. He dances with them, not like the boorish pigs in the clubs who grind up on girls and hurtle about waving arms. No – he does _dance._ He takes girls into his arms and teaches them to glide, his eyes level and red as his tongue, which may dart out to taste the sweat from some pretty farmer’s daughter’s neck.

He talks with a measured sweetness, purple enough to impress those with little reference for real prose. He becomes the fantasy; every prince, every beautiful troubled soul in every dime store novel; he has the act down.

Will asks him why he does this for them, why he seems to collect girls and why he isn’t bored with them yet and he says the reason lies with what you can learn from a young woman. Women, he says, will tell you secrets if you can make them come.

Secrets of their families, their friends. Secrets like that junior high teacher who touched them in the bathroom and they never told anybody about, like how they used to keep seashells they found and hide them under their pillows because they hoped they were magical. The kinds of secrets people tell little girls because they think it’s safe to.

Because, he says, it’s still fun.

One night, Hannibal takes Will to his apartment and hides him in the closet, a small crack letting him see into the room. He can see, if he sits correctly, the most of Hannibal’s bed and the curtained window above his desk.

“What’s this all about?”

“I want you to see something.”

“You’re putting me in the closet.”

“Yes?”

“What do you mean ‘ _yes?_ ’ I’m in a goddamned closet!”

“Hush. I want to share something with you.”

“What kind of ‘thing?’”

“A special one. I’ve found an easier way to answer your question.”

Will waits a good ten minutes in that closet. He curses under his breath and starts to stand when two voices drift under the apartment door. He settles back and waits – his breath is stopped and he has to tell himself _breathe, breathe,_ so his lungs keep working.

The nursing student is on Hannibal’s arm; her eyes are maroon, not unlike Hannibal’s, and they shine in the low light of the room. He pulls her close and kisses her, softly and slowly, as if time was never a factor and to hurry would be to spoiler the taste of her.

“Oh, _Hannibal_ ,” she coos, and she’s on the bed, now, legs spread with Hannibal’s hand sliding up her inner thigh, up under her skirt. She gasps and giggles and Hannibal looks directly at the closet door. His eyes are a deep red, blown black, and Will’s breathing has gone haggard. He covers his mouth with his hand, realization dawning that yes, this is Hannibal’s surprise and, yes, he’s now watching his best friend go down on a girl he’d met and had seen _Picnic_ with not three days ago and she doesn’t know.

Hannibal’s stripping her clothes off with almost frustrating care, as he’s taking his time and she’s rubbing her thighs against him and arching and touching her clit and her breasts. She’s very beautiful naked: pale skin with light freckles dusting her arms and legs and parts of her belly. She looks almost surreal. Like something that should have remained in an oil painting; forever nude and forever lustful.

His clothes are almost all off as well, and Will watches the coil of his muscles, the way his back moves as he eats the girl out. He’s definitely got his tongue in her – she’s moaning and grabbing the sheets – and his fingers are pressed white into the flesh of her hips. They dimple under his grip and will probably bruise, too, by the end of it.

Will’s cock is straining against his pants; he zips them down and grabs himself. He can see the outline of Hannibal’s cock in his jeans and his mouth is dry. The girl’s back arches and she’s quivering and then lax. Hannibal’s hands leave red blotches on her hips and quickly remove the last of his clothing. He jumps up on the bed, condom on, fitting easily in the space between the girl’s thighs. His tongue darts out against her lips and she smacks at them. I taste so _good_ , she’s saying, and Hannibal’s easing into her.

Will looks right at the place where they’re joined. Where the thatches of hair blend – black into brown. He watches as Hannibal moves – in, out, in, out. Her voice is climbing higher in pitch. Will’s hand is moving faster, and he’s breathing harder. He bites his other wrist to keep his noises down.

Hannibal’s hit something, and she cries out. He does it again, and again, and again, and her cries shorten and choke more each time until no sound comes out at all, just the continuous slapping of skin and the breathy grunts Hannibal makes as he moves. Will comes with her, the white of him hitting the closet door and slowly dripping down. Hannibal keeps going until he, too, goes still and his grunts become moans become some string of words Will doesn’t recognize. He collapses on top of her and pulls out, almost sluggishly.

There is, now, only the breathing and the rustle of sheets and the smack of a disposed condom in a toilet bowl. Will’s forehead is pressed to the doorjamb, eyes fluttering, trying to focus on Hannibal, his lashes black against his skin, lips parted just a touch. The red tongue licking the bottom lip, the flush in his cheeks. The way his hair is disheveled, matted to his face in spots.

In about twenty minutes, the secrets are told.

From the lips of this girl, this living painting with lily skin and flecks of orange on her arms, spill out such little secrets. Some more like tales than others, some more terrifying. She always wanted to be a doctor, she said, but she was told girls had to be nurses. When she was twelve, she used to throw especially ugly rocks into the neighbor-boy’s yard with the idea of cursing him for lifting her skirt all the time. Then he killed himself in junior year and her first thought was of those ugly little rocks and her pink skirt and started crying in class and had to be sent home. She used to dream about a ship on a sea where everyone only spoke backwards. In the dreams, she says, I could always speak backwards.

There’s a little open secret about Professor Greer in Physiology. He’ll buy your junior high pictures for a good price. You could get extra credit for ones in swimsuits, too. He used to work in a junior high school, she says, but you can imagine that couldn’t really last long. He’s married, but they don’t have kids. I wonder if that’s something to do with it. Do men get baby-crazy, too?

Little girls have so many secrets, so many things they hear and are told and so many things people forget or ignore about them. They are alone in the world, where children kill other children in school buildings and in parks. One must understand the danger of bored little girls. Little boys will kill you with their hands. But it’s little girls who will kill you with their laugh, their tears, with their eyes and mouths and cunts.

~////~

There’s sweat caking Hannibal’s brow, and the way his eyes twitch under their lids and his lips move rapidly, as though he were desperately praying, sink under Will’s skin and rake his nerves. He’s shaking as he wets a towel and dabs the sweat off. The tourniquet on Hannibal’s arm is yellow and rubbery and damned hard to untie. The veins relax, smoothing back under the skin.

Will reads the label on the jar and it says laudanum – some kind of truth serum. What on Earth could he want with laudanum? Hannibal jerks about and Will has to pin him down bodily to keep him from throwing himself off the bed. His cheek presses against Hannibal’s. Hannibal’s chest and neck vibrate and rumble with haggard breathing and mumbling and his heart is pounding so hard Will can feel it. Will presses his lips to Hannibal’s ear, shushing and petting his hair and whispering some words he hopes are comforting.

He may have said the words _I love you_ , at some point, but for the moment he is breathing and feeling Hannibal and Hannibal’s sickness, this twisted trip to wherever he is; and Will keeps on with him until morning, when they are both tired and sweaty and smelling of stale fear and drool. Will holds onto Hannibal, tightly, keeping him down on the mattress. Hannibal makes no move to push him off, but lays there, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Will’s voice is choked, like a kind of sobbing with a sore throat. He’s begging something, about Europe, about the laudanum, about the parties and the girls and how afraid, oh, how so very afraid he was this time. To never do this again , you bastard, don’t you dare ever do this to me again. I’ll kill you myself if you do this again. I will, I’ll kill you, I swear.

There may be tears pricking at the salt filmed over his cheeks. He might clutch Will’s nape and waist to him, he may whisper promises they both know he won’t keep. Hannibal knows he’ll hurt this boy, if he stays he’ll hurt him. If he doesn’t, he’ll hate him and hurt him, and the cycle will never end, and he knows that Will could never let him.

Because something like love – too selfish to really be love, and too poisonous, certainly, but love he will call it – and something like need keep them together. And Will sees the ugliness of Hannibal, and the beauty of him. He sees where nothingness becomes existence. Where the beginning, the becoming, starts and ends and he’ll make his own choice. It’s a choice Hannibal knows will never be the right one for either of them, but understands will be the only one they could both accept.

~////~

The easy exhibitionism Hannibal indulges in Paris both sickens and awes Will. There are nightclubs filled to brimming with people in tight clothing, sprayed on shirts. The very air of them stinks of ecstasy, among other things, and Hannibal…he’s at the center. The golden god with the shark’s grin and bloody eyes. Boys and women are with him often, and Will sits in the small, plush armchair of their hotel room and simply watches.

It’s all a show for him, he knows. The Lolita in the night who whimpers and mewls as she sucks the cock of some Moroccan sailor under Hannibal’s steady instruction. The malformed prostitutes, the opium junkies, each and every thing that passes through their little room as Will watches and as Hannibal watches Will watching. It’s ill. Depraved. But it’s a form of art Will finds himself drawn to, compelled to sit in that chair and absorb for the red glinting across from him.

Paris is haunted, for the people are possessed. There are shops with hand-crafted dildos of carved mahogany, some in brass or a similarly precious metal. It’s all a marvelous show of freaks. Designed for illusion, an art of distraction in exquisite practice.

Hannibal is looking for something. Or, more likely, some _one_. It’s the underlying purpose of his performance, and Will, being who he is, knows this and has known since their first night together on their little bed-stage – an Adonic deacon from the church between them.

“Are you ever going to tell me?” He says. The room smells of blood, and the boy from the street-corner is pressing a washcloth to his nose in the little bath-sink. Hannibal’s hand snakes up the linens and clutches the bedpost and he stretches. His cock is lax, but he manages that sort of suggestive atmosphere of constant arousal – all he needs is the right cant of the hips, the right tilt of the head and hooded eyes.

“Tell you what?” He knows exactly what.

“Tell me just what you’re looking for?”

“Fun, mostly.”

“You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

“Then the answer is no.”

“Even if I ask you directly?”

“Even if you ask me directly.”

An impasse. Hannibal can be so stubborn when he wants to, and Will bites his tongue because to call him on it would be a marvelous hypocrisy and they both know it.

~////~

Herr Dortlich’s head is rolling, still caught in the rope on the horse’s harness and Will retches. He ducks behind some tree or bush or whatever the Hell it is and retches until there’s nothing but air coming up. He knew this would happen – of course this was going to happen – he just didn’t want it to happen. What a fucking idiot. What a _fucking_ idiot. There are tears running down Will’s face and his nose is a mess of snot and he’s cursing Hannibal and he’s cursing himself and cursing God for letting the whole thing happen in the first place.

Hannibal is doing…something with the corpse. Another thing Will probably shouldn’t be surprised about – won’t be surprised about. He stands and wipes the vomit and the snot off his face; he walks back and he makes himself _look_.

He sees it all over again and it’s easier, now that the guy’s already dead. Hannibal’s words – pure venom, although Will didn’t understand the language – the spray of red, Hannibal singing, singing, singing…

“Are you okay?”

That Will says this surprises them both, though Hannibal seems amused more than is appropriate. “I think so.” He says. The bastard.

“There are going to be more, aren’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Will nods and walks over to the horse – Cesar, Hannibal called it – and strokes along the animal’s great neck. He lets his mind blink to the breathing of the beast, grounding himself to the warmth of it. Hannibal will kill every person, every _pig_ that crossed him and Will is going to let him. Until…what? Until there’s too much and he can’t sit by anymore and watch his best friend – this boy he loves – or feels something like the cruel twin of love for – rip whatever semblance of a soul he may have into smaller and smaller pieces? Or until he knows Hannibal is bored with him? Or until Will is tired of Hannibal?

There is no favorable prediction. No happy ending. They are cursed boys. Wicked changelings left behind by mothers who knew better. They are the children of malice, and of hate. For they, Will knows, as he watches Hannibal cut into the leg of Herr Dortlich and pull the meat out piece by piece; they are the kind the Devil pities.

**Author's Note:**

> _Comments and constructive criticisms are welcome and encouraged. Thank you!_
> 
>  
> 
> [Commissions Page](http://elvisqueso.tumblr.com/commissions)


End file.
